Search tips

Here you will find some useful tips to improve your search

Search on Length:

Are you looking for all short articles on a certain topic, or would you only like to find the longer, comprehensive articles? Try searching for example on longer articles only.: lead(Berlusconi or Prodi) and length>3000. You can also search for documents of a specific length (=2000) or a smaller length (<1000).

Search Within Results / Narrow Search

When you have run a search you will retrieve up to 3000 results. In these results you can search again using the ‘Search Within Results' (nexis.com / lexis.com) or ‘Narrow Search' (LexisNexis) box which is listed above the results.

Exclusions in complex search strings

If you search string consists of multiple terms you want to include and exclude, you use the key commands AND, OR and AND NOT. The search string should be built in a way that all the INclusions are in the first part of the search string and the Exclusions in the last part, after the AND NOT. For example:
Bnp or banque national de paris and paribas AND NOT shares or broker! or stock

The ‘Sources’ Tab

Through the tab ‘Sources' you can simply and quickly find the right sources available to you within the LexisNexis service. Searching for sources is made easy by searching on category, geography or language. When looking up a source you can also find relevant information about the source that you have found by clicking on the ‘i' at the

Capitals

LexisNexis does not make a distinction between capitals and small type. If you do want to make a distinction you can use one of the following commands:

  • Caps: to retrieve at least one capital
    Example: caps(Gap)
  • Allcaps: the retrieved search terms that only contain capitals.
    Example: allcaps(ING)

'not w/n'

With the command ‘not w/n' you can exclude terms that appear within a certain amount of words of the searchterm. The amount of words should be placed on the ‘n'. For instance: ABN AMRO not w/5 sponsor!

Search Advisor

In order to easily find legal information on Lexis.com, you can use ‘Lexis Search Advisor'. With this tool you can:

  • find the right source to search;
  • look for new cases with regard to your topic;
  • find all articles that regard to your topic